Exporting upcoming tracks with full tag data (publisher, BPM) — is there a way?

[Gigigi]

Hello Bernd,

I run a themed web radio with ProppFrexx (v4.x) and I have built a small automation around it. Before asking, I have read the manual appendix and searched the forum, so I hope the question is precise enough.

What I am doing

An external script reads the tracks that are about to play and prepares some material for each one in advance. It needs a few minutes of lead time, so it works from a queue of upcoming tracks rather than from the current one.

What I have now

On OnTrackLoad I use two commands:


EXEC_WRITE_FILE C:\ProppfrexxMAJ\LOAD.txt|nu|${artist}|${title}|${year}|${composer}|${cplname}|0|${now}|${genre}|${album}
PLS_CURRENT_SAVEAS C:\ProppfrexxMAJ\PLAYLIST.m3u8
EXEC_WRITE_FILE gives me exactly the fields I want for the current track, in a custom pipe-separated layout. I can add ${publisher} and ${bpm} there without any problem.
PLS_CURRENT_SAVEAS gives me the upcoming queue (currently 184 tracks), which is what I need — but the M3U8 format is fixed. Each entry is only #EXTINF:<seconds>,Artist - Title, so genre, album, publisher and BPM are lost.
What I tried and why it did not work

I looked at EXEC_WRITE_PLAYLISTFILE with a template file, hoping to combine both. But if I read the manual and the forum correctly, its numbered macros go backwards through the playback history, not forwards through the queue:


Previous5: ${05trackname}
Current: ${01trackname}
Next: ${nexttrackname}
The manual says "note, that the 01 macros relate to the current track", and only ${next*} looks ahead — a single track, and the documented ${next*} set does not include publisher or bpm.

My question

Is there any way to export the upcoming tracks with their full tag data?

Specifically:

1. Can PLS_CURRENT_SAVEAS (or another PLS_* command) write a playlist using a custom template, so I could produce a pipe-separated line per track instead of plain #EXTINF?
2. Do forward-looking macros exist that I may have missed — something like ${02artist} meaning the next but one, or ${nextpublisher} / ${nextbpm}?
3. If neither exists, is there another supported route to read the upcoming queue with full tags? A control command, an API, or a playlist file format that keeps the tags?
I do not need all 184 tracks — even 5 or 10 tracks ahead with full tags would solve my problem entirely.

Thank you very much for ProppFrexx and for the time you give to this forum.

[radio42]

to 1: No. not a custom template, but any of the supported playlist formats.
Note, that the *.pfp (ProppFrexx Playlist Format) is a format in xml, which contains all meta data format values!
I.e. you might use the .pfp format (just specify this extension) to write and parse all those fields. The format is explicitly defined here: https://www.radio42.com/proppfrexx/down ... Format.pdf

to 2: No. Only the mentioned ${next...} macros.

to 3: Only the one mentioned at 1.

[Gigigi]

Perfect, thank you very much !